[NOTE: This paper was read at IAML 2010 Moscow, but lacks proper citations and bibliography. Fully extended version is scheduled to be published in 2011.] Popular music in Japan: Very different? Not so different? Harumichi YAMADA, Professor, Tokyo Keizai University Tokyo Keizai University, 185-8502, Japan [email protected] Japan has been often referred to as the second largest national market for the popular music business, only after USA. This market has unique aspects in many ways, but the most distinct character is its domestic orientation. While some Asian nations share interests in Japanese popular music for certain degrees, Japanese musicians may hardly be known in the Western world. The language barrier is the largest factor to explain the situation, but it might not be the only reason. Though almost all musical elements in modern Japanese popular music originated in the Western world, they are domesticated or re-organized to produce something quite different from the original Western counterparts. Taking cases from the history of popular music in 20th century Japan, I will describe some typical acclimatizing processes of Western music elements. Introduction of Western music into the schools Japan experienced a rough and rapid process of modernization, or Westernization, in late 19th century, especially after the Meiji Restoration in 1867. The introduction of Western music was one aspect of that modernization. While some elements of Western music like military bands and church hymns arrived a little earlier, their influence was limited. Most ordinary Japanese people were exposed to Western style music through school education, which was under the control of the Ministry of Education. In fact, it was still under construction by the Ministry for almost all part of the 19th century. Shuji IZAWA (1851-1917) was a pioneer of modern music education in Japan. He was sent to study in Massachusetts, USA from 1875 to 1878 with varied assignments, one of which was music education. After returning from USA, Izawa (with another colleague) submitted a proposal for establishing a research body for music, and it was realized as the ongaku torishirabe kakari (音楽取調掛), or Music Study Committee, which survived for almost a decade (1879-1887), and then became the Tokyo School of Music (currently 1 [NOTE: This paper was read at IAML 2010 Moscow, but lacks proper citations and bibliography. Fully extended version is scheduled to be published in 2011.] Tokyo University of the Arts). Izawa invited his mentor, Luther Whiting Mason (1828-1896), the Director of the Boston Music School, to visit the Music Study Committee, and Mason stayed in Tokyo for 1880-1882. One of the MSC’s missions was to provide materials for music education at schools in Japan. Early songbooks in 1880s, compiled by Izawa, Mason, and others, largely consisted of Western folk songs with translated (or newly created) Japanese lyrics. Gradually, the share of original songs by Japanese composers increased, and in 1910, the first authorized songbook fully penned by Japanese composers was published by the Ministry of Education. This was called the Jinjo shogaku tokuhon shoka, or Song Textbook for the Ordinary Elementary School). Songs in those songbooks were influential in establishing Japanese aesthetics towards Western music. One example of the adaptation or acclimatization process of Western music found in Japan was the development of yonanuki pentatonic scales. Songs with yonanuki pentatonic scales were often found in Celtic or other European folk songs like Auld Lang Syne, Comin thro' the Rye, etc., and many of them were, and still are, well-known among the Japanese because they have been commonly used materials in music classrooms. While the major yonanuki pentatonic scale consists of the same notes as the traditional Japanese folk song scale, the minor yonanuki pentatonic scale consists of the same notes as miyako-bushi (都節), or the traditional Japanese “urban music” scale. What was lacking in traditional Japanese pentatonic scales is a sense of “tonic”. As the result of the traditional sense of scales meeting the Western theory of scales, yonanuki pentatonic scales were found (or invented) as a useful springboard for Japanese to jump into Western music. Early recordings First commercial recording in Japan is said to have taken place in 1899 using wax phonograph cylinders, but those contents were lost. First known recordings by Japanese performers was carried out in Paris, France on Berliner disc in 1900. First full-scale recording in Japan was in 1903, by Frederick William Gaisberg (1873-1951), and some songs from this recording sessions in Tokyo were commercially made into discs, and imported home to Japan. Historians are divided in answering what and when was the first recorded “hit song” in Japan. Matsu-no-koe (1906) by Ryogetsu KAMINAGA (1888-1976), and Fukkatsu shoka (1915), a.k.a. Katyusha no uta by Sumako MATSUI (1886-1919) are often 2 [NOTE: This paper was read at IAML 2010 Moscow, but lacks proper citations and bibliography. Fully extended version is scheduled to be published in 2011.] referred to as the first one. Domestic production of gramophone records started in 1910, but domestically manufactured ones, in its quality, were not yet sufficiently comparable with imported ones. The Invention of “Folk songs” The term min’yo (民謡) was coined around 1891 as a translation for “Volkslied” in German, or “folk song” in English, and came into currency after 1906. The Ministry of Education started collecting local folk songs nationwide around this time, and academic (and somewhat political) discussion over min’yo flourished from the 1910s on. Many composers who were educated in the Western music tradition, in partnership with poets/lyricists whose ideology was genbun itchi (言文一致), or the unification of speech and writing, published mass quantities of shin min’yo (新民謡), or new folk songs, from the 1920s onward. The timing of this movement coincided with the period of the re-establishment of the record industry in Japan. Although motives found in both the lyrics and melodies of shin min’yo followed or respected the tradition of folk songs, some melodies found in shin min’yo are quite different from traditional ones. Many shin min’yo pieces were sung and popularized by singers who had been trained in Western classical music. Other shin min’yo pieces were made popular by geisha singers, who were also the conservators of a type of traditional music. Their performances often showed a unique amalgamation of Western and traditional Japanese sounds. When Japanese record industry was re-established in late 1920s, those shin min’yo pieces, singers, composers and lyricists would shift to form those of mainstream popular songs, or ryukoka (流行歌). The Introduction of Western Popular Music into Show Business The first commercial opera company in Japan was organized in 1911 at Teikoku Gekijo (帝国劇場), or the Imperial Theater, which was closed down in 1916 after a series of commercially unsuccessful productions of Italian, and original Japanese operas. Following this failure, some singers from the company started small productions of excerpts from operas, operettas, and other Western musical pieces at music halls in Asakusa, the most flourishing show business quarter in Tokyo of the time. Jogun 3 [NOTE: This paper was read at IAML 2010 Moscow, but lacks proper citations and bibliography. Fully extended version is scheduled to be published in 2011.] shussei (女軍出征), or the Women’s Army, in 1917, which was one of the earliest successes of the form that later become known as “Asakusa opera”, was a comedy plotted by a Japanese playwright. It included several popular Western songs with Japanese lyrics added, including It's a Long Way to Tipperary. While more serious performances excerpted from operas sung in Italian were also popular, most popular among Asakusa opera performances were adaptations of popular classical music with often comical Japanese lyrics. Materials sung in Japanese included arias from classical opera pieces, popularized Western folk songs, and those penned by Japanese composers, often splicing existing melodies. For the audience at Asakusa, it was one of the most fashionable modernist culture of the time. The prosperity of the music business in Asakusa was lost in the Great Kanto earthquake of 1923. The earthquake gave a serious, if not fatal, blow to the music business from theater to the record industry. At that time, Japan largely imported gramophones and records from Western countries, namely the USA, the UK, and Germany, and the quality of domestically manufactured records was insufficient and seen second-class. After the quake, the Japanese government raised tariffs on luxury goods, including gramophones and records, to 100%, which encouraged importers to start high-quality domestic production of gramophones and records, using Western technology (and capital). In 1927, Columbia and Victor started joint-ventures using Japanese and foreign capital, and headed by non-Japanese presidents. Polydor was owned by a Japanese company, with the technology supplied by its German partner company, and started operation also in 1927. Two purely Japanese record companies, King (established in 1931) and Teichiku (1934), successfully followed after these international labels, and competed with them using new technology, and a new process of (electric) recording. These five companies largely controlled the market until the 1970s. The arrival of new process records and these five companies introduced a new pattern of producing records. Rather than recording existing popular songs, new songs were written, recorded and promoted to gain popularity. New song sprang from shin min’yo movement quickly constituted mainstream ryukoka. In some cases, songs newly published in the USA were transplanted, lyrics written in Japanese, and recorded by Japanese singers. As a result, the Japanese audience was exposed to the American jazz music of the time, but the popularity of the resulting songs was not the same as it was in the USA.